1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information providing system and device for providing information to users using an electronic mailing system, and a method thereof, a program for the method and a storage medium storing the program.
2. Related Background Art
In recent years, an information providing service utilizing the Internet has become available by the development of a communication infrastructure and an information communication technology. The information providing service utilizing the Internet can provide not only information by means of characters but also multimedia information including images, sounds or the like.
In addition, a user can communicate and exchange information using electronic mails with other users by registering a mail account for using electronic mails.
Although electronic mail information is usually in a text format, a binary file such as application data (a document file) prepared by a user can also be transmitted and received among users as an attachment to the electronic mail information by the technologies for encoding binary data into text data and decoding text data into binary data.
On the other hand, because of the development of a wireless communication infrastructure and an information communication technology therefor as well as the advancement of miniaturization of a terminal for utilizing them, connection to the Internet has become possible not only from a desktop personal computer but also from a portable terminal for a mobile environment such as a cellular phone. As a result, the number of users who send electronic mails using portable terminals is increasing rapidly.
Means for obtaining information circulating over the Internet is no longer limited to a personal computer but are now available in huge variety such as a portable terminal and an electronic mail dedicated terminal. There are a variety of physical limitations and capability limitations peculiar to each of such means, for example a limitation on an amount of information that can be received, a limitation on displaying capability (size, color, resolution or the like) of terminals or the like. In addition, even in communication and exchanges of electronic mails between personal computers that have fewer limitations on displaying capability compared with portable terminals, both a sender and a receiver of information often lack a common information processing environment.
Under such an environment, unless both the users understand each other's environment in advance and exchanges information in the manner matching the other's environment, information that cannot be handled is discarded as it is.
For example, in a portable terminal such as a cellular phone, limitations are set on a number of receivable characters for one mail and information contents (attached files) that can be handled in the case in which electronic mails are exchanged via the Internet. If a receiver utilizes such a portable terminal, information that cannot be handled by the portable terminal (characters exceeding the number of characters allowed for one mail and an attached file that cannot be handled) is discarded in the portable terminal as it is or discarded on a server side.
If a destination user utilizes a mail address provided by a portable telephone carrier, it can be imagined from its domain name that the destination user uses a cellular phone. However, not all users of portable terminals utilize such mail addresses. In general, even a user of a portable terminal utilizes a standard address system of an Internet mail. Moreover, some users of portable terminals transfer mail addresses that are utilized in terminals, such as desktop personal computers, with different limitations on receipts of electronic mails to mail addresses of portable terminals. Thus, the user on a transmitting side cannot easily determine the information receiving capability of a receiver terminal. As a result, it is also extremely hard for a sender of an electronic mail to estimate an environment of a receiver to process the mail into a format compatible with the receiver's environment and send it to the receiver.
Therefore, there are frequent occurrences of mails lacking the information in the exchanges of electronic mails through portable terminals.
If a capacity of information that is receivable from a WWW (World Wide Web) server is larger than a limitation on the number of characters receivable from an electronic mail server, a user sets environment such that an electronic mail to a portable terminal is transferred to an account of the user on the WWW server from the electronic mail server before it is received in a portable terminal and the electronic mail is viewed through the WWW server, whereby the receivable number of characters in the electronic mail can be increased. However, this merely avoids the limitation on the receivable number of characters in a portable terminal, but cannot handle viewing of a binary file and data acquisition, and further unconditionally transfers an electronic mail to a portable terminal. Thus, a user of a portable terminal always has to confirm if a mail has been transferred to the WWW server, which causes significant load to the user of the portable terminal.
In addition, it is not practical, due to limitations on a displaying capability, processing capability or the like of a portable terminal, for a sender of an electronic mail to attach a document file or the like prepared by using an application if only the portable terminal is utilized as connecting means to the Internet.
Moreover, even in receiving means such as a desktop personal computer besides a portable terminal, which is an Internet connection terminal having fewer limitations, requires an application that is used when a sender of the electronic mail prepared an attached document or an application having compatibility with the application in order to develop and display the document to be attached to the electronic mail. However, such applications do not always exist in an electronic mail receiving terminal. In this case, an electronic mail receiver cannot easily see information sent by the electronic mail sender.
Under such an environment, unless a receiver prepares an environment that is compatible with a transmission environment of a sender by consuming a significant amount of labor, information sent from the sender cannot be confirmed.